MINISTER’S PROFILE FORM
Reformed Church in America
Introduction
The Reformed Church in America’s Office of Ministry Services provides information and services to ordained ministers who are seeking a call and churches who are seeking ordained ministers. Itdoes not recommend any particular candidate or church but instead serves as a resource to both.
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MINISTER’S PROFILE FORM
Reformed Church in America
Section A. Background Information
- Date Submitted:
2. Please check which one of the following choices best applies:
First Call
Experienced Pastor
3. Name:Ryan Potter
4. Home Address: 1611 Herbert St Lansing, MI
5. Home Telephone(Including area code): n/a
6. Mobile/Cell Phone: 419-344-0299
7. E-Mail:
8. Office Address:n/a
9. Office Telephone (including area code): n/a
10. Year of ordination: If student, anticipated ordination date: Summer 2013
11. Denomination of ordination:RCA
12. If not RCA, what classis or supervising body from the ordaining denomination recognizes your ordination?
13. Present denomination:
14. Present classis or judicatory:South Grand Rapids Classis
15. If you are not now a member of the Reformed Church in America, can you, in good conscience, agree with the doctrine, discipline and government of the RCA?
Yes No (If no, explain briefly)
16. Do you support the mission and vision of the Reformed Church in America?
Yes No (If no, explain briefly)
17. Citizen of what country(ies)? USA
If not USA, do you have permit to live and work in the USA?
YesNo(If no, explain briefly)
18. Previous experience: List all full-time or major positions beginning with current position (include dates, position, church/employer/location);
Date / Position Description / Church/Employer and Location06/11 – 05/12 / College Ministry Coordinator / Calvary Baptist Church, Peabody MA
09/08 – 05/09 / Pastoral Intern / University Reformed Church, Lansing MI
19. Formal Education: List in order of the most recent first (include school, dates,degree).
School / Dates / DegreeGordon-Conwell Theological Seminary / 09/09 – 05/12 / M.Div
Michigan State University / 09/04 – 05/08 / B.A. Communication
20. Continuing Education: List in order of the most recent first (including organization/school, dates, program).
Organization / Date / Program21. Languages: List any languages other than English in which you can preach or converse fluently:
Section B. Reflection
Please answer the following questions, adding your own experiences where appropriate.
1)Describe your strengths, the best of who you are, and what you bring in service to the church.
I feel that one of my greatest strengths as a pastor is the joy and excitement that comes when I think about the task of shepherding a congregation. It is evident that God has given me a deep love for his Church, and it is out of that love that I receive the energy to keep plodding along in a life of ministry. As I think about the task of the pastor I am constantly and simultaneously sobered, encouraged, and delighted by the charge in Hebrews 13:17. I am sobered at the thought of having to give an account to God for how well I watched over the souls in my church. I am encouraged by the truth that God will equip me to complete this great task. And I am delighted that if I remain faithful to my calling that many will love Jesus more fully and clearly as a result.
In light of these things I feel that what I bring to the church is an eager spirit that is ready to serve, a solid foundation and understanding of the nature of pastoral ministry, and a humility in regards to the authority that I am given.
2). Name two or three mentors who have significantly contributed to your ministry and explain why these people are important to you.
All of the mentors that I have had over the past years mean a great deal to me for the simple reason that they all gave their time and energy for the sake of making me into a better disciple of Jesus Christ. But since there are too many for me to mention individually I will mention the two who have had the most impact on my spiritual life. The first is my pastor for the last eight years Kevin DeYoung. I’m sure that many people have different opinions about him, especially in the RCA, but he has taught me a great deal about what it truly means to be a pastor. I have learned from him the importance of being able to teach a congregation and help them to be discerning of theological truths. I have learned that there are some issues which we must be courageous enough to stand up against, and he has also helped me to differentiate the things which we must fight for and those which can be peaceably disagreed on. Finally, he did a great deal to show me that the greatest strength a preacher has is his ability to stand upon the word of God. I quickly realized that my eloquence, humor, style, outlines, etc… don’t ultimately determine the success of my preaching, but it is my commitment to the scriptures that will transform hearts.
The second person who has had a profound impact on my spiritual growth is the director of the college ministry I was involved in at Michigan State. His name is Jon Saunders and he is a perfect example of what it means to give yourself away for the sake of the gospel. For anyone who has done college ministry knows that there are many challenges and many sacrifices that come with the territory. But Jon takes joy in these because he knows that his work is helping students to live a gospel transformed life. Because of his example I can easily give up a life of comfort and ease for the opportunity to make Christ known and to care for his church.
3). What caused you to enter ministry and what are the core values that define your vision for ministry?
Interestingly enough I felt a call to ministry when I was only five years old. I was sitting in my kindergarten class and our teacher asked us what we wanted to be when we grew up. I remember that even at such a young age thinking to myself, I want to be a pastor. As I grew up I actually forgot about my childhood experience, that is, until I entered college. It was then, when I was faced with the unlimited number of career options before me, that I realized picturing a lifetime of pastoral ministry was the only thing that brought me any real contentment. Any other profession felt boring to me, and imagining spending thirty years as a banker or lawyer seemed tedious and unfulfilling. But in thinking about pastoring a congregation for the next 30 or 40 years brings me great joy an excitement.
In terms of my core ministry values – what absolutely must be present for a church to succeed – I look to the example set by the apostles in Acts 6. When confronted with the complaint of the lack of care given to the Hebrew widows the twelve responded by saying, "It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables. Therefore, brothers,pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we will appoint to this duty. But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word." I take from this that any minister who wishes to have a vibrant and fruitful ministry must also devote himself to the word of God and to prayer. This does not mean that there aren’t other duties for a pastor to perform, but it does mean that he must make a serious effort to be soaked in the word of God and to be in constant prayer for his church. These must be the core values of any ministry, for without them the church would fall.
4). Explain the strategies or ideas that most excite you for helping a church to
become and remain missional.
My belief is that what a church needs the most in order to be missional is a deep love for Jesus. For, if God’s people are not truly transformed by the grace of Christ, and if their lives do not overflow with joy then every mission strategy would ultimately fall short; since unbelievers would see a wimpy, dull, and unimpressive God. But if as a pastor I can help people to love God more, then they would naturally become a better salt to the world.
If helping people to take more joy in the gospel is the grand scheme of making a church more missional, there are also practical ways that we can put our joy on display for the world to see. As I’ve thought about this over the past years I have become more convinced that the easiest way to do this is by starting in our own neighborhoods. It is not a hard thing to go out of our way to have our neighbors over for dinner, to hear their stories, and show them that we care about them for who they are. Sadly, it is more often the case that we have over our Christian friends (which is in fact a good thing) and never think to give some of our best time to those who need a positive Christian witness.
5). Name three of your most passionate hopes for the Church at large and why they are significant to you.
One of the greatest threats currently facing the Church is the continued questioning of the reliability and authority of the scriptures in the life of believers. Therefore, my greatest hope is that moving forward words like inerrant, authoritative, and inspired would no longer be punch lines but a comfort to believers. If the scriptures are no longer seen as the very words of God which are normative for every believer, but are regarded as fallen words written by sinful men then the church will soon lose her way. For the moment we allow for any part of scripture to be ignored because it doesn’t suit our liking then we are no longer subjecting ourselves to God, but are inventing a God of our own imagination.
My second greatest hope for the Church is aimed more at the American Church, and my hope is that we would no longer suffer from apathy and nominalism, but that we would give God the first fruits of our time, effort, and resources. How much kingdom work could be accomplished if the Church in America counted all things as loss for the sake of Christ? What if more people said giving more to the church is worth having a few less square feet in my house? What if more people said feeding the hungry was worth more than an afternoon of watching football? What if more parents were willing to let their children face the dangers of the mission field rather than force them to remain behind the safety of their desks?
Finally, I hope for the continued fulfillment of the great commission by missionaries making headway in more of the unreached people groups. Jesus’ great commission was to make disciples of all nations (ethnos - peoples), and therefore we must not stop until the task is complete. Unfortunately there is much work left to be done from establishing a Christian witness, to translating the Bible, and planting viable churchesin thousands of people groups across the world. Therefore, it is my hope that in the course of my lifetime that the Christ would be known more and more throughout the earth and that there would be no one alive who has not heard the name of Jesus and the gospel of grace.
6). Give an example of how you would theologically address an issue facing our contemporary world. Please be thorough enough to help the reader to understand your thought processes and your life commitments.
One area in our contemporary culture which the church has to continue to fight for ground is in our assertion of the exclusivity of Jesus. It is becoming more and more popular amongst our post-modern piers to question claims of absolute truth and to assert that there are many ways to know and understand God. “Jesus is simply one expression of who God is” they say. Unfortunately Jesus himself doesn’t make this claim. In fact he says just the opposite, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6)Or Peter: “there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved." (Act 4:12) Or Paul, “For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” (1Ti 2:5)
These passages are merely a small sampling of all that the Bible has to say about the exclusivity of Jesus, but they are only one campaign that we must fight against the secular mindset. For we must not only show what the scriptures teach but must also show the contradiction in believing that several mutually exclusive claims can all represent the same truth. One religion that says there is one God and that we live with him forever after we die, another that says there are many Gods and that our spirits converge into theirs after we die, and another that claims the goal of life is to cease to exist cannot all capture the same truth.
Once it can be shown that the idea of subjective truth is a myth then we can begin to make our case for the reliability of Christ’s claims. In other words we have to first establish the idea that there is one objective reality which explains all of life, and then we can move on to determining the substance of that reality.
7). What theologians, pastors, authors or other leaders have had the greatest influence upon your life and thought? (List up to four and please explain your choices.)
The most influential book that I have read (which makes the author one of my most influential theologians) is The End for Which God Created the World by Jonathan Edwards. Edwards’ premise that all of creation exists for the chief end of bringing glory to God completely shifted my paradigm of how I understood our purpose as Christians and our relationship with God.
Coming down the same stream from Edwards I would have to list John Piper as my second most influential pastor/theologian. Foremost, for the way that he further extends Edwards thought on glorifying God by making our joy the way that we bring the most glory to God. More than this I love Piper for the way that his entire theological framework is about how we can make God the center of everything. Not only does he fight for joy in all things to the glory of God, but he fights to show that God is supreme in all things through Christ. I cannot read or listen to Piper without feeling a greater affection for Christ than when I first began.
Finally, the last pastor which I must mention who has had a profound impact on my thinking is Mark Dever. I had no idea what ecclesiology was, let alone that one could write more than a few pages on the subject, until I read Dever. Indeed he introduced me ways of thinking about the nature of the church and the role of the pastor that I had never considered before. And of all the helpful bits of truth that I have digested from him, none has done more to shape my vision for pastoral ministry than the understanding that my work as a pastor in a church ought to be a slow steady plodding along for 20-30 years. I used to think about casting a vision for a church in terms of what can be accomplished in months. But I learned from pastor Dever that I ought to measure my ministry in decades and be willing to commit to the same body of believers over the long haul.
8). How do you hope someone influenced by your ministry would describe what s/he considers to be most important?
My greatest hope for someone who has been influenced by my ministry is that they would understand the full richness of the gospel, what implications it has for their own identity, and that it would radically transform their life. All we have in this life as believers is the hope that Jesus saves, and once we understand this truth it has implications for everything that we do. Realizing that by free grace God has declared us to be his children should free us from many of our sins of idolatry, pride, and the love of praise. Furthermore this freedom ought to infuse joy, love, comfort, and peace into every corner of our lives. Therefore, my ministry is mainly about proclaiming the gospel to everyone, including those who have already believed it. Because the gospel is central to everything in the Christian life, and it defines who we are.